The search is over! We bid on a townhouse in Alameda and our offer was accepted!!  We signed the papers this morning before work and I was a ball of nerves all day.  This is Jes reading the text message from our realtor.

KK was super happy to hear that we got “the house with the playground” and we all toasted our “victory”. Even Peanut joined in on the celebration.

So, we’ll be getting our loan finalized this week and we’ll have 30 days until we will get our keys. It’s exciting but also a bittersweet move for me. I love where we live and how easy it is to do stuff without having to pile everyone into the car. But the kids will be getting bigger and we have truly used up every square inch of our home already.  I’ll write more about my SF Bucket List in another post. Instead, here are some pictures of the house.

Here’s the front (the one with the teal door). The two windows on the second floor have access to a balcony and they will be the kids’ rooms.

This is the entryway. To the right of the stairs (not pictures) is the washer/dryer room and half-bathroom. To the left is the front room (probably going to be our dining room) and kitchen.

Here’s the kitchen. It’s clean, simple, and could use some new appliances but totally functional. We are thinking of renovating the whole kitchen in the near future and hope to include a gas range if we can find the right guys to help us run gas into the house. We are also happy that this house has a hood that vents smoke out of the house. It’ll be nice to have a home that doesn’t get all smokey every time Jes decides to pan-sear meat.

Here is the view through the kitchen to the front room and to the front of the house.

This is the front room. It’s staged as a small livingroom but we will probably just put the dining table in here. There’s a view of the green belt in front where the kids can run around (away from the street).

Here’s the infamous playground that KK is so excited about. She’s stoked to have a play structure just steps from her front door.

Here is the back of the house – it’s a good-sized family room and dining area (that we may just use for something else).

I love how much light comes through despite having shared walls with neighbors on both sides.

There’s a patio in the back that also connects to the two-car garage. It’s small but just enough for some grilling and outdoor eating and play.

Upstairs has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. This is one of the kids’ rooms. Actually KK has already claimed this as hers (“the one on the left)”. We’ll see if she sticks to this decision based on a 5-minute Open House we attended last weekend.

There’s so much to love about this home:

1. The price: It’s much less than the other houses we’ve looked at and bid on over the past 9 months.  It’ll mean we can live in a bigger home for almost the same price we’re paying now for our condo in the city.
2. The location: It’s on Bay Farm Island, which gives Jes and KK access to the ferry and transbay bus that can take them straight to work/school.  We’ll also be walking distance (0.7 miles) to a Safeway  and Jimmy and Eleen are a 5-minute drive or 23-minute walk away (1.2 miles). The distance to work for me will be about the same.
3. The school district: The main reason we were looking to move was to provide a good education to our kids without going through a lottery system or paying for private school. The ratings for the public schools are 10-10-9 for elementary, middle, and high school respectively.
4. Space: 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, a patio, and two-car garage are plenty for us to grow into.

This market has been ridiculous and I’m so relieved that the hunt is over. We have spent so many weekends dragging our kids from house to house on the weekends (and in the rain) and bidding on houses we knew were way overpriced.  The last house we bid on had 15 offers and we were only #8 in line!! Right before we found this house, we were on the brink of either overpaying for another tiny house (like 1.2 million for a 2 bedroom bungalow) or just giving up and spending $26,000/year to send KK to private school in the city for another year. This was our last-ditch effort and I’m so happy it turned out the way it did.

Alameda, here we come!!!

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